1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a selective call receiver having a display function for displaying a received message, and in particular to a message displaying method and apparatus thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A selective call receiver has been widely used for various purposes and, especially, a small-sized and lightweight selective call receiver called a pager is suitable for being taken on the road. One of basic functions of the selective call receiver is to indicate by beep sound, vibration, or light the incoming call.
Further, some selective call receivers have not only such an informing function but also a function of displaying a message on an liquid-crystal display (LCD) with received numeric data only. However, since only numerals are used to display information on LCD, the transmitted information cannot be interpreted with precision. For this, as a desperate measure, a pun of numerals is frequently used to inform a user of the information in practice.
To improve power of expression, a selective call receiver which can display a plurality of face looks on screen has been proposed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 7-336744. More specifically, the selective call receiver is provided with a memory storing a plurality of patterns each representing a different face look, for example, a joyful face, an angry face, a tearful face and the like. When receiving a selective calling signal including a fixed-message number as well as a feeling number specifying one of face looks, the selective call receiver displays the fixed message corresponding to the fixed-message number and the face look corresponding to the feeling number on screen. Therefore, a sender can transmit a feeling expression to the receiver by selecting one of the feeling numbers.